"Helicopter CFI Lesson Plans - How To Make Your Own"

All right, and we are live. I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter L School. You see here on the screen with me is Brian Rutledge, our operations manager. He has been with us part time status for seven years and he is now with us full time. This is his six week with us full time and we're excited. And that's part of these presentations we're bringing you is stuff that Brian is building brand new for helicopterland ground school. And we're really proud of what he's been doing. And today he's going to teach you an option for building CFI lessons plans. CFI lesson plans, Right. And this is a great topic because people ask about this all the time. And before Brian gets started, I want to mention, you know, we're doing this stuff because of the stay at home people stuck, flight schools closed, people are studying. That's why we're going live every day to keep you entertained, let you know about ground school. And you're seeing firsthand a lot of the new content that's going inside of helicopter on ground school. And so these are like the drafts and the things that we're putting in there. So yesterday somebody said, well, hey, what's the difference between what you're doing daily and what you're in ground school? Because some of those videos are kind of old. Well, yeah, we've got hundreds of videos in there, but we're constantly updating. So you're getting a glimpse into what Brian is building. He's been putting new downloads into the section and we've been uploading brand new videos in the maneuver section. And what Brian is here with us to do in helicopter and ground school is take us to the next level. So a lot of these things that you're seeing that we're doing live, these are presentations going into helicopter and ground school. Right. So what's the difference? The difference is when you're inside helicopter line ground school, you're going to the content you want in order. You're not on YouTube listening to me tell, you know, stories and, you know, and saying hi to Bob and Mary and everybody else, which is great.

Right?

We got 13 people here so far. That's awesome. So that's the difference between what we do live we've been doing here on YouTube is there's a difference between the content that you're seeing live in these events and what's inside the helicopter on the ground school. So I have Brian's presentation up. I'm going to let him give you a little intro and I'm going to be following him along, and I'm going to just quit talking and let you take over. Brian, teach us about CFI lesson plans.

All right. Yeah. This was actually a big, big question that I had when I was going through my CFI training. We talked about lesson plans. I thought, I have no idea how to do a lesson plan. And once you kind of get into the nuts and bolts of it, you have some type of a guide to follow you through. And there's a lot of them out there. What I'm going to show you today, it's just one example. It's not the only way you can do it. The FAA even has sample lesson plans that you can go through and follow the guide. They're all over the place, and it really doesn't matter. The problem is a lot of people just don't know where to start, and they're not sure how to get the basis going and then turn it into a completed project. So we're going to start off with. This is going to be a real simple one, real basic, but you can adapt what I have on this particular presentation to any maneuver. So we're going to start off with how to build a lesson plan for a maneuver. This particular maneuver, it's just straight and level flight, very basic. So Kenny's got that up on the screen. And this is a skeleton draft, if you want to call it that. And basically, you'll see at the top, objective. Always have an objective with your lesson plans and the objective, what is the purpose of the maneuver that you want to teach your student? You should have a clear objective for them and convey that to them. This is why I'm teaching you this particular maneuver. So whether it's straight and level flight, slopes, slope landings, auto rotation training, it doesn't matter. There's an objective for each one of those. The next one down is motivation. You know, why should the student want to learn this new skill? And you can use stories that you have that tie into the particular maneuver that you're teaching. And then we'll move over to the presentation itself. Now, this is where you have to really sit down and think about what are the main points for the topic that you're trying to teach. So, yeah, you see six that I have on the screen with question marks. There doesn't mean that you have to have six. The particular maneuver that you're teaching may only have four. There may be 10. It all depends on the maneuver that you're teaching. And just below that, you could leave yourself some space. You could Throw in a nice visual aid, a picture of some sort. Maybe if it's slope landing, show a picture of a helicopter sitting on a slope. Maybe a couple of arrows pointing to the direction cyclics should be. Little things like that can kind of help the person presentation that you're trying to teach. Go a little bit further with your student below the picture I have on there key points. This is the main thing you want to emphasize. Don't confuse it with the area just above that. That was during the presentation. You know those main topics. This is taking those main topics and condensing it into two or three main points that you want to emphasize. Then if you go down a little bit further in the document, you're going to see the next section is questions for the student. This one I found really interesting when I was learning how to put together lesson plans. And this is a really good one because after you've given your presentation to your student and you have explained the maneuver in detail, covered all the main points that you wanted to cover, then you ask them a couple questions. And it could be two, three, four questions. But this gives the instructor the opportunity to confirm that the student understands what you just taught them. So if they can answer the questions, that's great. If they can't, you may have to go back and review a little bit with them. Then below that we have, it's just titled Maneuver Guide. Straight and Level flight Maneuver Guide, or maybe Sloped Landings Maneuver Guide. This is where you can put step by step instructions on performing that particular maneuver. And again, the number of steps is going to be dependent on the type of maneuver that you're teaching. Auto rotations may have quite a few more. Straight and level flight might have a few less. You don't know until you sit down and actually start writing these things out. Below the maneuver guide, you can put the common errors. Again, this is something that you can provide to your students. Say, look, you know, this is typically where students struggle in this particular maneuver. Actually explain it to them. So, and you're doing that, you're doing these lesson plans, you're doing this before you ever get in the aircraft. You know, a lot of people will say, oh, you know, learning in the, in the helicopter is the best way. Actually in my mind, if you can sit down and you can talk through the maneuver and explain in detail what's expected of the student and have them, you know, they have an opportunity to ask good questions and they're not trying to fly the helicopter all at the same time, you can really cement a Lot of good knowledge that way. So give them the common errors that are typical for the maneuver that you're trying to teach. Then we'll move down to completion standards and below that you'll see what does the PTS require. So in the completion standards, if you're not using the practical Test standards to cover this area, you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your student. You really want to show them from day one that the practical Test standards, the PTS guide, is their guide to completing their checkride. They need to be able to perform at the level that's in the practical test standards. So you might as well start from the very beginning and show them you're not going to be at this level on day one. Very likely. But this is the standard that we're going to hold you to. So if you emphasize that from the beginning and let them know we're going to go out, we're going to perform the maneuver that we just talked about. I'll demonstrate it to you, you demonstrate it to me, and we're going to continue working on this until you meet the PTS standards for each maneuver. And when they can meet those standards for each maneuver, they're ready for their checkride. So again, this was just a kind of a skeleton lesson plan. So what we're going to do now is we're going to pull up the lesson plan for straight and level flight that has all these sections completed and all filled in. So Kenny's got that up on the screen again, the objective. We talked about what an objective is, so here's the objective for straight and level flight. Maintain constant altitude and constant heading while keeping the helicopter coordinated. And again, if you fill all these blanks in appropriately, these lesson plans can be transferred to any other CFI if they need to step in and teach a particular subject for you. Because you're going to be on vacation, your student still needs to have some ground school. You can handle your lesson plans and say, follow these lesson plans, everything's detailed and any CFI should be able to pick up your lesson plans and go through it and actually teach the ground school for you in your absence. So below the objective again, we go back to the motivation. Why is this important? So it's a necessary skill and most flight requires the helicopter being straight, level flight. If you think about it, we spend a lot of time flying straight and level. So that should motivate your student to become very, very proficient with this particular maneuver presentation. Now, we've put in kind of a time limit for this Presentation, let's say you've decided that it's going to be about 10 minutes. So just put that on there so that you don't lose track of how much time you should be spending on a particular presentation itself. And then when you look down below, we've got what we're going to cover in the presentation. So you've got the definition of straight and level flight. It's constant altitude, constant heading, and it's coordinated flight. And then you've got a series of bullet points below that, such as using the natural horizon to help maintain straight and level flight. You talked a little bit about, you know, if the horizon line rises or lowers in flight, you know, what, what needs to be done. Is the nose too low? Is the nose too high? Do I need to increase power? Do I need to, to decrease power? And you're explaining all of these different attributes to straight and level flight and how to perform the maneuver. Then we talk about staying coordinated, not sliding left or right in the seat. You don't just say stay coordinated. You want to tell them, you know, if you feel pressure on the left side of your rear end or versus the right side, you know, you're not coordinated. And you have a trim string, you've got an inclinometer, and you can verify that you're in straight and level flight by those, those two things. Then the last one is, you know, explain to them that the altimeter verifies their altitude heading indicator verifies the direction that they're flying, and again, inclinometer or stream tells them if they're coordinating. And then below that, as a visual aid, there's a visual aid of the tip path plane of the rotor disk, and you look off into the distance. The one thing it is missing we talk about in straight and level flight is using a reference point, such as the compass or maybe there's a particular rivet in the center portion of the, of the windscreen, that when you're in straight and level flight, that that particular object in the cockpit is lined up with the horizon. So we want to explain that to them, how to utilize that. And then we drop down to the key points. So here's those. In this one, I've just got two. And the key point that I want to emphasize to the student is, you know, once they have the attitude of the aircraft set for straight and level flight, do a cross check real quick. Just double check your altimeter and verify the results. Make sure, okay, I'm not climbing, I'm not descending. I've got the Results that I wanted. And number two is select that prominent visual cue that we were just talking about using a compass or something else in the cockpit to determine its relationship to the horizon while you're in straight and level flight. And again, it really depends on the maneuver that you're to trying. Trying to teach is going to dictate how many key points or how many topics, main topics you want to cover in that particular maneuver. Once you get through the key points, you'll see we've got the questions for the students. So we've given them our entire presentation and now we ask them, you know, Joe or Jane, you know, how can you determine if the helicopter is coordinated without using the inclinometer? Well, we talked about that in the presentation. If they were paying attention, they'd be, oh, I remember him saying he's not feeling any pressure left or right when he's sitting in the seat. If it's kind of awkward feeling when you're flying, then I'm not coordinated. So I'm not using the inclinometer. I don't have to stare at the inclinometer to determine that I'm in straight and level flight. I don't have to stare at the trim string. I can actually tell physically by feeling what the helicopter is doing and relationship to my body and know that I'm in straight and level flight. Another question, how can I, how can straight and level flight be verified? Well, we talked about that as well. We verify by looking at the altimeter, we're not climbing, we're not descending. And the last one, how can straight and level flight be observed while looking outside? So we reference that particular thing, such as maybe the compass or some other prominent object in the cockpit in relationship to the horizon. And that's how they can determine it by looking outside. So we've covered everything that we want to teach them. We've made the key points to them, we've asked them some questions, they've answered the questions appropriately. And then below that we can talk to them about, you know, here's a maneuver guide. They can write this down, you can make a copy form, something for them to study with. And we go through point by point by point how to accomplish straight and level flight. So when we get below that, we want to explain to them what the common errors are. If we don't do the things in the maneuver guide above correctly. And you talk about the failure to trim the helicopter appropriately, you know, holding too much anti torque pedal pressure and opposite sideclicks. So now you're cross Controlling failure to maintain the desired speed. And you just go through each one of these and let's them know this is the problems that students have. And you won't meet standards until you can do this maneuver without any of these errors. And so we drop down to the bottom, we talk about completion standards. And you know, this is where you take the practical test standards and you apply them to the completion standards, because that's what they have to follow. They have to go through the completion standards, meet that standard in order to pass a checkride. So again, this was just a very simple walk you through how to put together a lesson plan on really any maneuver that you're going to teach. And then what we're going to do is we're going to move over to a lesson plan. Let me pull it up here real quick. A lesson plan. Say we're going to do ground training on airspace. So I put together just a quick, easy lesson plan. And you can adapt this outline to anything that you want to teach that you know, Even if it's a maneuver, you could still use this particular one and turn it into a maneuver lesson plan as well. But this one's just a little bit different. So it still has an objective. We want the student to become familiar with the national airspace system. Pretty simple. And then the elements, what are we going to cover when we talk to them about this? And this is where you have to be very careful and make sure you, as the instructor, aren't leaving anything out. So we want, we want to do the classification of the airspaces and we want to cover them all. A, B, C, D, E, G. We want to cover special vfr, special use airspace, other airspaces, and we want to talk about cloud clearances and visibility limitations, all those things that are encompassing flying in various airspaces throughout the United States. So now we know what we want to teach and we want to go through each one of those. Now below that you're going to see I've got kind of a little schedule set up because if you're going to teach aerospace, you're probably not going to get through all of the, all those classifications and everything in one lesson. So this is where you break it down. You say, okay, I'm going to break this down into four lessons. How much time is it going to take? Because you, as a flight instructor, your time is very important. So you need to know how long this takes you to do the presentation. So under schedule, you see review the last lesson and any homework. So an instructor should be assigning something for the Next, either ground lesson or flight lesson, something like read chapter such and such in the helicopter flying Handbook. Then we're going to do a lesson on it. Maybe they have video lessons like hog. Make sure you watch the video and then when you come in on your next day, we're going to go through and we're going to learn all about airspace. So you do your present your general overview of all the airspaces. Maybe we say that takes 30 minutes and again all these times are going to be dependent upon each student. Some students learn faster, other students have experience. Some experience. Some students have no experience. So you're going to may have to adapt your time frames as necessary. Lesson two, maybe we're going to talk about the airspace dimensions and the requirements. And lesson three, we'll go over cloud clearance and visibility, about a 20 minute presentation there. And then the last one we'll talk about special use airspace. So you break down airspace into 3, 4 individual lessons so you don't inundate the student. And every time they come back for the next lesson on airspace, you give them a little review on what you presented the first time, maybe quiz them on what you talked about in lesson one. And it just helps them see if they're actually retaining the information. And it gives you an idea, you know, are they really studying the material that you've told them to study below that we put on there? Okay, equipment. What kind of equipment do we need as an instructor when we're teaching airspace? Well, we're definitely going to need the FAR AIM and we're going to need VFR sectional charts. Might want. Maybe you're a person that wants to use a whiteboard and some markers. Maybe you're comfortable just writing it on a piece of paper. Doesn't matter. Maybe you're an iPad user. Whatever you want to use, just make sure you put that under your equipment section so that when you come in to teach that course, you don't forget something. You don't leave it at home, leave it in your car. You want to look like you know what you're doing as an instructor and that you are there for them. For your student, you're wanting to prepare the best lesson that you can for them and they'll know the difference. References. Again, you know where to go in your references. So if you're going to talk about airspace in the AIM, chapter three talks all about airspace. So just give yourself. This is a note for you so you don't forget anything as an instructor and you can pass that on to your student. FAR Part 71 and 73 talk all about airspace. You might as well provide that information to your student. And then the VFR sectional charts like we talked about. And then the last part is completion standards. And you notice right next to that is private pilot pts and it's got the FAA number. Just put it on there so that the student knows you're serious about completion standards and it's the PTS that you're going to be going off of. So in this one it says student will have completed this lesson by demonstrating an understanding of an national airspace by explaining the following. So now they're going to explain to you when you're done with all your lessons and you've given them all their quizzing, they're now going to explain to you all the rules and requirements for A, B, C, D, E, G, special use airspace, cloud clearances and visibility requirements for each class of airspace. And again as the instructor you set up the time frame that you want this to occur. That quizzing and going over those things, that could be a sit down session, maybe that takes you an hour. You take one hour, that's one hour ground school. When you come in tomorrow, we're going to go over all of these things and see what you actually know. And again it just gives you something more of a checkbox that I've covered everything with my student. They demonstrated that they understand it, that they know it through questioning, through demonstrations themselves and that's what lesson plans are all for. So again, these lesson plans that you saw today, it's just one way to do it. You don't have to do it this way. You can pick any way that you want and just make sure that you are covering all the elements when you teach and make sure you follow some kind of an outline so that the presentation itself flows well with your students and that will just help them retain the information even better than if you didn't have some type of an outline to follow. So that really in a nutshell is lesson plans the way I like to do them. And Kenny, you got anything you want to add on that?

Absolutely. Nice job, Brian. Please give us a thumbs up for Brian. This guy's doing a freaking bang up job. We were chatting last night, texting each other when I was at home out by the fire drinking a beer and I'm texting going hey, how's you liking your job? He's like, oh my God, it's, you know, I can tell it took six weeks and he's like overwhelmed in this hogs world, you know, I told him before he started, I said, you just wait about a month or two and you're going to be going, oh my God, what do I work on? But you know, and I was punting him up, going, dude, I love what you're doing and I love what we're doing. He's like, yeah, but he was worried about all this stuff. I'm like, hey, if I like it, it's good. And what we're doing is freaking awesome. So give a thumbs up on this video please for us, for Brian, all the content that he's given you. And I want to mention Heather and then I'm going to just one little tidbit on the lesson plans. Heather is here in chat talking to all of you. And what we're doing is Heather's at home, Brian's at home in California, I'm at the hangar. So what we're doing on these daily events is Heather is there talking to all of you, taking your comments and she's got one question for us to answer here. Heather's there to talk to everybody. I'm here to support Brian's presentation so I can work through it. And Heather's job is important too. Heather has been with me now over two years. Heather's man on the phone line taking your HOGS questions for members, new members, potential members and answering many of your questions. And she is there daily in chat saying hi to everybody. So give us a thumbs up for Heather as well because Heather's doing a bang up job. Her knowledge is getting really good for two years and a non pilot. She's answering more and more questions and we have, you know, our little Hogs 3P super team right now along with our additional part time instructors and guest instructors and want to say on Brian's presentation, you're absolutely right Brian. It's a, whatever form or fashion you need to do to build your CFI lesson plans, do it. You know. And if you're just going to copy somebody's, you better go through them and know them. Even if you don't make your own and you adopt somebody else's. Here's what I want to say about lesson plans. I will reiterate what Brian said. You can build them however you want. There's million ways to do it. Like there's a million ways of doing a quick stop. But know what's in those lesson plans. And let me tell you, many of you know who Tim Tucker is, right? I did my CFI checkride with Tim Tucker. My lesson plans were in my notebook. I wrote Them myself, whatever lesson plans you have, know what is in them. And my instructor was a. He was. That's all he did. We just cranked out CFIs and would send them to Tim Tucker. And he said, do not open a page anywhere in your lesson plans that you don't know what's, what's on there, you know. And I was teaching Tim Tucker, what was I teaching? Something with aerodynamics and rotor blades and blade stall and all this stuff. And he started looking for the term blowback. And he's what's the term for that? And I'm like. And he took my notebook and he flipped my lesson pan page or lesson plan to the next page and there's the term rollback or rollback. Blowback, Blowback, rollback from my record days. Blowback. And he looks at me because I'm stumped with this term I'm trying to find. And he literally. And I'm going to say this and laugh about it, but Tim's a. Tim's tough in a check ride. And I talked to him about this at heli Expo last year and he laughed and said, oh no, I've never acted that way in a check ride. He tossed my notebook across the table. I mean, he goes sliding across this great big table and he's like, how about knowing what's in your own lesson plan? Oh, talk about burn city, right? So after this all day oral, my instructor goes, I told you, I pre warned you. And my instructor is getting pissed because, you know, whatever's in your lesson plan, however you build it, however you do it, make sure you know what's in there. And when you go to checkride time, you damn well what's in your lesson plan. So there's my quick little story on that one. Here's I see a couple questions. Let me get the first one Heather brought up. This is for you, Brian, because we haven't talked about this openly, but I know what you've told me in the past. It's been a few weeks since we talked about this. From Kevin. Darn, I lost my Internet. Will Brian make some sample downloads available on the hog site.

CFI lesson plans. Is that what we're referring to? I'm assuming, right?

Yeah, I can read it again. He said, will Brian makes some sample downloads available on the hugs.

Well, I just did. Yes, that is something that it's gonna happen again. Time constraints and things of that nature, but yes, those are coming.

Okay, got another question from Jim Hardy who's here often. He's usually late and today he said, is there a good comprehensive source for learning for lesson plans for private pilot?

Here's what I'll say on that. You can't go, you can't go wrong with the Helicopter Flying Handbook. I mean, if you're a private pilot and you're learning all the information what HOGS provides in the videos in a format that follows the helicopter Flying Handbook, you're going to find vast amount of information. As far as a lesson plan, I would say when you get to like the maneuvers, basic maneuvers, the advanced maneuvers, as well as the airspace that we just did with all the downloads, we just put a ton of downloads, can each one of those sections, if you print those out, that really can be utilized very similar to a lesson plan because it is a lesson on how to perform the particular maneuver. The only difference is there's nothing that stipulates what the objective is, what the motivation is. You know, presentation time, all that stuff, you know, that's separate. That's for a CFI to fill in those blanks. But those can be used as lesson plans as well. I hope I'm answering that question. I hope that's what he was kind of.

I think so. That was a pretty general, pretty general question, but I think you did great. I want to mention Tim Beeman said as a beginning student, this is extremely helpful for how to prepare for upcoming lessons and really thinking about what to expect and what will be expected. That's an awesome comment. Seen some other comments in here. Ron's in here today making some nice comments on your presentation, Brian. Ron is a chief pilot to a helicopter flight school that uses. Encourages their students to use helicopter on ground school. And I appreciate that very much. Ron makes lots and lots of great comments. See lots of other, you know, just a lot of people enjoying the content, a lot of people saying hi. One more comment. I see. If you have the skills and software, lesson plans should be developed on a computer so they could be easily updated, changed without redoing the whole thing, of course. Great idea. Mine were all handwritten, but you know, that was 20 years ago.

Right.

And doing on a computer, sure, absolutely.

I tell you as an instructor, you make them on your computer, upload them onto your, onto your iPad. If that works for you, the sky's the limit. You know, do what works best for you. But yeah, be able to modify them when needed. Having a computer generated copy is really good. You can even take your, the maneuver section and the completion standard section and just cut and paste and provide that as a booklet for your student. So now they know. Here's the maneuver. This is how I want the maneuver done. And here's your completion standards for each maneuver. Boom. You just created a mini lesson plan for them with cut and paste.

Awesome. And I just want to mention Ron said most welcome, Kenny. Love your shows. And I appreciate Ron as being a chief pilot. He gets in YouTube a lot and makes a lot of really good comments about flight training. And I can. I remember from a lot of his comments, you know, Ron came up the hard road like we did and studied hard and to get all of his ratings. And he's made a lot of great comments. He just made another one. Discussion about motivation is important why we're doing this maneuver. Skill. Maybe something that's saves. Saves yours or your crew's lives. So important to emphasize. Awesome. Okay.

All right.

I'm gonna give myself a pat in the back. I promised Brian today I wasn't gonna go on and on today. And you know, a lot of people love the longer videos. Some people go, God, you just go on forever. So I'm gonna wrap it up. But I do want to say, Brian, you're doing a frigging awesome job. Everybody give us a thumbs up on the video for Brian. You're gonna see so much more. I'm just so thrilled and excited and I can't see stand it. I can't relate to you. How exciting it is. Have Brian here helping us take helicopter online to ground school. To the left, next level. Yesterday I mentioned here's what's cool. Brian has a different set of skill sets, comes from a different. A different area, which is great, right? Because I came up the piston powered turbine or piston powered helicopter training environment into the CFI world. Brian came from airplane side of the world, then into helicopters, but started out in turbine aircraft because he was flying for a sheriff's department. So that alone coming from two different backgrounds, his experiences complement my experiences or vice versa. And we both have different things to bring to the table. And I'm a random crazy entrepreneur. And Brian's more calculated and detailed and it's a great mix. And Heather's doing a bang up job keeping track of everybody. So helicopter ground school. There's a link down below this video we have a special on. Now if you see this many video from six months from now, there might be a special going on. But always go to helicopterground.com the link is always below the video to go check out our training. We have 24 hour test flights and we have 100% money back. No hassle, guarantee so I see a hooray for Brian. Like I said, I can't. I can't say enough good things. I'm so excited. This is one of the best presentations we've ever done, Brian. This was freaking smooth, and there's so much more to come. There's so much more to come. So do us a favor. Subscribe the channel and click the bell that'll be notified of our upcoming videos. Got anything you want to add before we go, Brian?

I think we covered everything. I think we did awesome.

Short, to the point. Not super short, but, hey, we hit the elements of what we needed to. So thanks, Max. Flight helicopter. Awesome. Thanks, Heather, for tuning in today. Thanks, Brian. And we'll see you all in the next video.